It's been awhile

I spent the better part of the past week trying to gain some semblance of order to my house. As embarrassing as it is for me to admit this, I had no folded or put away any laundry in probably three months. The laundry got clean, sure, but then it would end up on our bedroom floor in and around laundry baskets. We'd have to sort through the piles of clothes every morning to find clothes for all of us to wear and it was just so bad that I was so overwhelmed with the task in front of me, that I continued to not deal with it. It is crazy how simple household chores such as laundry folding get away from me like it was, but this certainly is not the first time it got so bad, and I am sure it won't be the last. All it takes is one round of flu, a day or two of feeling down in the dumps, or a trip with no laundry facilities for a few days to get out of control.

Finally last weekend I had had enough, and I knew that I needed to spend a day fixing this disaster of a laundry problem. I spent all day Monday doing just that, and by the end of the day every shirt, towel, sock, and pairs of pants were neatly folded and in their drawers. This inspired me to get the remainder of my house organized, and doing so consumed the rest of the week, hence me not doing any blogging for an entire week. It was so worth it though, because now I can actually invite people over without having to keep them from leaving my living room and kitchen, the only two rooms that I am normally good at keeping relatively clean. As a matter of fact, my friend Elissa and her boys came over for dinner last night, and we spent the better part of the evening playing with the kids upstairs. It was quite nice being able to enjoy the other half of our house!

Besides our nice visit with friends last night, we had an "interesting" weekend. The girls went to Minneapolis with my parents on Friday to watch my brother Jason participate in the Ironman race Saturday morning. They had a great time and my parents spoiled them at the Build A Bear Workshop. According to my mom, Regan had a bit of a meltdown Friday night as they left the Mall of America and realized that there were bad storms in the area. Regan has been deathly afraid of thunder since she was a toddler, and that fear has come to envelope all aspects of bad weather, including many that we have never experienced first hand like tornadoes and hurricanes. Regan has decided that we cannot visit Washington D.C., where my brother Jason lives, in the spring because they have tornadoes there during springtime. In the early fall when hurricane season kicks in down south she spends week worrying about one of my best friends, Liz, and her family who live in Lousiana. And when we have bad weather here at home, she literally shakes and cannot sleep if the storm is coming through during the night. It is an issue that is getting worse and we are not sure how to deal with it.

Anyway, while the girls were gone we enjoyed some time with our boys. Saturday morning we decided to treat them to a train ride. I'll just say that it was great for the first half of the ride, but we had a very scary incident happen on the way back to the train depot which has left all of us a bit shook up. We are all okay, but it might take a few days to get the incident out of our minds.

Prior to the incident, however, we had a lot of fun and I got some cute pictures of my boys.

Here, Braden told me that he wanted to make some funny faces for the camera and of course I obliged in snapping some pictures of him!

His "mad" face:


The "funny" face:


And of course, his Gene Simmons impression!:


Then we had Coen. Coen loved the train, that is until it stared moving.

Coen's life at that point was clearly in shambles:


Yes, it truly was THAT BAD:


Thankfully, life was all better again once he had a mouthful of M&M's:


:-)